Misfit Love

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Shhhhh... Don’t tell anyone, but here at Paizo we love our classic and misfit monsters. There is a tendency to look back at some of the oddball monsters that popped up in the sources of our youth and lament on how strange or even dumb they are. We take a different tact. Instead we revel in their strange and iconic natures. Any chance we get, we look for reason why even the most inexplicable monsters might exist in a fantasy world.

If you’re a fan of our Misfit Monsters Redeemed, you will like how many of those monsters show up in Bestiary 3. From the strangely philosophical flail snail, to those inexplicable fan favorites, the flumphs, to the downright creepy wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing, let’s just say this book is full of some strange old friends. But wait, there’s more!

Misfit Monsters Redeemed is not the only source of inspiration for the classic and misfit monsters that made the cut for Bestiary 3. Many Bonus Bestiary monsters found their way into Bestiary 3—from the axe beak, to the caryatid column, to the unholy huecuva—old favorites abound in this tome.

Now for those of you who buy nearly all of Paizo’s products, and are maybe becoming worried that you’ve seen many of the classic monsters that are appearing in Bestiary 3, don’t worry. While most of the monsters see updates, new information, and maybe some streamlining of mechanics, there are also some old favorites that show up for the first time in a Paizo product. Some of those highlights include the penanggalen, the vodyanoi, and one of my favorite old monsters, the kamadan, which is previewed below, along with its two variants: the dusk and polar kamadan.

Breath Weapon (Su) A kamadan can exhale a cone of gas that makes living creatures fall asleep for 5 minutes (Fortitude DC 15 negates). Slapping or wounding awakens a creature put to sleep by this attack, but normal noise does not. This is a sleep effect. The save DC is Constitution-based.Snakes (Ex) A kamadan’s snakes attack simultaneously; this is always a secondary attack.

Polar Kamadan (CR +2): A polar kamadan has white fur with black spots like a snow leopard. Its snakes are furred as well. A polar kamadan has the advanced creature template and batlike wings that grant it a fly speed of 60 ft. (average). The breath weapon of a polar kamadan is particularly cold—those who succumb to it also suffer 1d4 points of Dexterity damage from numbness.

Well, that’s it for this week. Come back next week when we unleash more monsters that will make their appearance in Bestiary 3!

So the kamadan has a single attack for all its snakes that deals 1d4+1? (this is just clarification)

2) "The breath weapon of a polar [b]kamadan 3[b] is particularly cold"

I think this is just an editing mistake, at some point before the name polar kamadan, some one said "lets have some kamadan variants, kamadan 1 is the base and looks like a normal leopard, kamadan 2 looks like a black leopard, and kamadan 3 like a snow leopard." But before they were formally named, at least kamadan 3 was named kamadan 3. Or there is an errant 3?

So the kamadan has a single attack for all its snakes that deals 1d4+1? (this is just clarification)

2) "The breath weapon of a polar [b]kamadan 3[b] is particularly cold"

I think this is just an editing mistake, at some point before the name polar kamadan, some one said "lets have some kamadan variants, kamadan 1 is the base and looks like a normal leopard, kamadan 2 looks like a black leopard, and kamadan 3 like a snow leopard." But before they were formally named, at least kamadan 3 was named kamadan 3. Or there is an errant 3?

1) Correct. The kamadan's snakes attack similarly to how a medusa's snakes attack—as a single mass of bites. (We did this in both cases because giving either monster lots of separate snake attacks would end up with it doing FAR too much damage.)

2) The extra "3" is a typo in the blog post. There should be no 3 there at all. (Looking in Bestairy 3, the point where the "3" would show up is on a line break, and I suspect that when we copy-pasted the text from the PDF that all of the line breaks carried over as hard line breaks and so we had to go in and manually remove those and in the process hit the 3 instead of the "ENTER" key on the numerical pad to do so on that line.)

Damn, if it would shown 2 weeks ago I would use it instead of manticores on a "random" encounter when our party traveled outside the city. Luckily they will probably wander around more trying to reach nomad clans meeting at holy place in a few weeks.

Also, party half-elf fighter will be happy - Kamadan's breath is supernatural and thus magical so won't put him to sleep like nonmagical poison used by Xtabay.

BTW: I assume that its damage dice for all natural attacks are deliberately lowered from the standard values for Large creature? It has realy weak claws - two steps below standard.

That polar kamadan is kind of weird. It's breath weapon is so cold, it causes numbness, but it doesn't deal any cold damage. And, despite breathing numbing cold every 1d4 rounds, the polar kamadan isn't immune or resistant to cold.

Excellent! Paizo fires up the WABAC Machine and fields a replacement for the displacer beast. As Mairkurion said, "Well played."

Except for the displacement part. ;)

*cough* Coeurl *cough*

*whisper *sadly copyright exist

We statted them up in Pathfinder #22, actually... I think that's what Gorbacz was coughing about. They're not open content, but that doesn't mean you can't use them in your Pathfinder game at all.

Coeurl also wasn't game content, and I doubt A.E. Van Vogt's estate or whatever publisher has current rights to The Voyage of the Space Beagle* would mind that creature turning up in Pathfinder; it's free advertising, after all, and doesn't include nearly enough content from the story to constitute an actionable infringement of their copyright -- most book reviews would probably include more.

* Or would that be Erik Mona? It seems like exactly the sort of thing he'd snap up for Planet Stories if it happened to be out of print with the rights available for a reasonable price.

Coeurl also wasn't game content, and I doubt A.E. Van Vogt's estate or whatever publisher has current rights to The Voyage of the Space Beagle* would mind that creature turning up in Pathfinder; it's free advertising, after all, and doesn't include nearly enough content from the story to constitute an actionable infringement of their copyright -- most book reviews would probably include more.

* Or would that be Erik Mona? It seems like exactly the sort of thing he'd snap up for Planet Stories if it happened to be out of print with the rights available for a reasonable price.

Actually, we secured permission from Van Vogt's estate to print the stats for the Coeurl, but they didn't want it to be open content, which is why that's one of the few non-open rules bits we've published in a Pathfinder product.

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